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Woke Up This Morning Okay, let’s get this out of the way first thing: The Sopranos is secretly a ghost story. I know, I know. But seriously, hear me out here. From the first frame of the first episode in Dr. Melfi’s office to that infamous final scene in New Jersey’s legendary Holsten’s diner, the saga of the DiMeo crime family is all about hauntings—both figurative and terribly, heartbreakingly literal. To those unfamiliar with the details of the source material, The Sopranos may seem at first to be a bog-standard criminal procedural that finished its run nearly twenty years ago (jesus christ, what even is time anymore). But as anyone who’s watched the show start to finish will tell you, scratch just beneath the surface, and The Sopranos reveals itself as a deeply thoughtful, magically-minded story filled with enough ghosts to keep even the most seasoned horror fiend guessing. (In fact, only a few short years back, the horror community’s very own Gretchen Felker-Martin detailed just that in a truly excellent piece for The Outline that you should really read.) There are very real glimpses of the supernatural throughout The Sopranos’ run: Sal “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero, seasons dead by now, making a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance at the wake for Tony’s mother, Livia. Seasoned killer Paulie Walnuts paying a visit to a dubious medium only to be told things about his murderous past no one but the dead could possibly know. An apparition of the Virgin Mary floating above the stage at the Bada Bing! strip club. The list goes on and on. But on a deeper level, The Sopranos is all about the things haunting the characters living within its narrative. The ghosts of legacy, of responsibility, of guilt and violence are all over the show. Get comfortable with your own ghosts, people; we’re all haunted here. Tony Soprano himself is haunted by inescapable memories of his abusive and violent upbringing, and his struggle to reconcile his nostalgia-fueled “good” memories with the gruesome, terrifying realities of the environment he was raised in are mined for no small measure of horror throughout the show’s run. The ever-present specter of DiMeo family associates secretly turning states’ witness hangs over the mafiosos’ every move like a curse or an omen. Hell, in the very first episode, Tony confesses that he’s haunted by the ghosts of made guys from days long past: “It’s good to be in something from the ground floor. I came too late for that, and I know. But lately, I’m getting the feeling that I came in at the end. The best is over.” He’s haunted by what was, and impotent to change what is in the face of a modern world that he’s well aware spells his eventual extinction. Tony is an endangered species; one of the last mafia monsters on earth. Imagine the sheer terror that knowing that must inspire. But it’s not just The Sopranos that pulls off this particular trick. When taken from the right perspective, every story is a horror story: for henchmen just trying to earn a paycheck, James Bond is a horror slasher with a body count (and, let’s be honest, style points) to rival Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. Let’s not forget that Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, while yes, a nuanced family drama for the ages, also features a cameo from Lucifer himself, discussing the call—and the point—of the pit with Ivan Fyodorovich in the depths of a feverish nightmare. Even Elden Ring (all of Miyazaki’s Soulsbourne games, really) is really just cosmic horror masquerading as vaguely-post-apocalyptic high fantasy. I’ve written before about horror’s profound genre inclusivity, and let me tell you: once you start looking at your favorite stories through that lens, you can’t really unsee it ever again. But that’s only because horror has always been there, lurking in the shadows of every story, hiding in the attics and the sewers, just waiting to be uncovered. So why does this keep happening? Why, no matter where you look, can you find horror? Because horror is like cheese or crushed red pepper: it’s good on everything. Hybrid Horror (Isn’t A Thing) If you believe the pundits and critics, there’s been a recent trend-shift in recent years toward so-called hybrid horror—meaning horror-focused art that incorporates elements from other genres like crime thrillers, romance, comedy, erotica, and the like. But if we’re being honest with each other (and why wouldn’t we be? We’re friends, after all), unless your name is Edgar Allan Poe, hybrid horror really isn’t a thing. Allow me to explain. It’s probably not that hot of a take to say that Poe is really the inception point for modern horror fiction. He casts such a long shadow that, even now, 174 years after the man’s death, everything that followed is in some way, whether small or large, a response to his work. Poe set the template for so much of what makes a good horror story, after all, and it’s absolutely wild to read through the list of narrative tropes that he employed in his fiction—because so many of them are still in use today. (Side note: There’s also a really compelling argument to be made that, with “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Poe also invented the modern detective story, but my editors tell me that’s a story for a different article altogether; so go read Olivia Rutigliano’s truly fantastic op-ed on just that when you’re done reading this one.) No matter how you slice it, horror as we understand it today wouldn’t really exist without Poe, and after him, people everywhere start taking horror in wildly different directions. With Dracula, Bram Stoker decides that horror is best when it’s epistolary and super, super horny. Gaston Leroux makes it sweeping and epic and doomily romantic (or romantically doomed) in The Phantom of the Opera. Robert Louis Stevenson blends it with the fantastical and the scientific. HP Lovecraft makes it paranoid and racist. The point I’m trying to make here is that from almost the very beginning of what we might consider “modern horror,” people have been blending it with other genres to create something new—and, most of the time, to great success. There’s no such thing as “hybrid horror” because horror’s always been synthesized into something else. There’s a pretty good reason for that, too. I’m Dragging a Bunch of Fuckin’ Ghouls Around With Me Let’s jump back to The Sopranos for just a second. Part of what keeps me coming back to the show (as both a viewer and a writer) is the way that it focuses so much on the human side of the story it’s telling. Make no mistake, it’s absolutely profane, casually cruel, explosively violent, deeply wounded and, yeah, really, really funny—but only because the people at its center are all that and so much more. The Sopranos was always a story about the day-to-day lives of the people living and working and struggling in the heart of a system in irreversible decline, and in that struggle, their ultimate humanity, however flawed and tarnished, shines brightly through. That goes double for what they’re scared of. Because we all know what it feels like to be afraid, to be unsure, to be haunted. To live as a human is to live in fear, because life is absolutely fucking terrifying. That, maybe more than anything, is what unites us as a species—or at least it should. We all have our baggage, and we’ve all been scared to death. Fear is universal. That’s part of what makes horror so compelling: when it’s done right, we empathize with people through their fear, no matter how terrible they may be. So when we see the temperamental sociopaths within the DiMeo crime family scared shitless, we can’t help but see some part of ourselves in them. Every story has fear built into it. Every well-written character feels scared some of the time. Sure, we might call it “narrative stakes,” but at the end of the day, we’re really just talking about things that characters have a reason to be scared of. Sometimes those things are ghosts, or vampires, or shambling, cosmic hellbeasts, but sometimes they’re more ordinary: growing old or finding yourself cast in the role of caretaker. Mental health crises. Racism and the perils of refugee immigration. Homophobia and homophobic assholes. Religious trauma. Capitalism. Anymore, using the phrase “elevated horror” in earnest will get you laughed out of pretty much any bar populated with enough horror fans and creators—but, to be fair, I do see why it came about, even if I don’t agree with it. With horror on the rise, the uninitiated needed a way to help them begin to approach and understand the genre as a whole. By painting more obviously-allegorical works as highfalutin “elevated horror,” it allowed them to indulge in and enjoy the genre without feeling like they were slumming it. Fuck that. Horror never needed to be “elevated.” It’s always been the genre of metaphor and allegory. Anyone who pretends otherwise is trying to fool themselves—or you. Just Because the Ghosts Look Different Doesn’t Mean You’re Not Haunted One last thing about The Sopranos and all its ghosts. (Also, spoiler alert for a show that just celebrated its 25th anniversary. Just sayin’.) Late in the series’ final season, Tony starts losing people. Now, this might not seem like that much of a big deal on a show that’s positively flooded with corpses, but this time, it’s different. This time, the people that are dying—or worse, walking away—are those that have kept Tony in power over the course of the show: the deaths of Soprano/DiMeo family associates Eugene Pontecorvo and Vito Spatafore highlight the swift crumbling of the family foundation. An attempted assassination leaves Tony’s devoted consigliere, Silvio Dante, comatose with a grim prognosis; John “Johnny Sack” Sacrimoni, Tony’s New York-based mafia colleague and erstwhile mentor, dies slowly and agonizingly of stage 4 lung cancer in federal prison. Tony’s brother-in-law, Bobby Baccalieri, is shot and killed while shopping for model trains, and Tony himself murders his beloved nephew, Christopher Moltisanti, in the aftermath of a savage car crash. Worst of all? Tony’s longtime therapist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi, fires him as a client, frostily turning her back on the man for good. Horror runs on isolation, and throughout its final episodes, the narrative expertly flenses away nearly the entire architecture propping up Tony’s life, leaving him as alone and afraid as any horror protagonist. As Tony sits in the back booth at Holsten’s in the show’s final scene, waiting for his immediate family—the only people to not have abandoned him yet—to arrive, the dread and isolation are crushing. The specter of fate looms ever-larger over the man, all his ghosts rising up together to take their due. And just when you think the tension can’t get any greater— Well. You’ve probably heard how it ends by now. It’s the same way good ghost stories always do. No haunting is ever really over, after all—it doesn’t matter if you’re a mob boss, a priest, or a camp counselor. Just because the ghosts look different doesn’t mean you’re not haunted. it doesn’t matter if you’re a mob boss, a priest, or a camp counselor. Just because the ghosts look different doesn’t mean you’re not haunted. There’s a corollary to be drawn here: just as every story is secretly a horror story, every horror story is really about something else. Consider John Carpenter’s The Thing: while rightly regarded nowadays as a stone-cold masterpiece (and, full transparency here, my favorite movie of all time), upon release, The Thing was pretty much universally panned. The complaints go on and on, for anyone with an hour to waste and a functioning Google search bar who cares enough to look. The critics thought it was schlock. They said it was too dark, too nihilistic, too much this and not enough that. Shit, in a recent interview with The Guardian, Carpenter himself even explained that “the film was an enormous failure. I got fired because of it.” Except, as we’re all perfectly aware, The Thing has so much more going on under the hood than critics thought at first. Depending on who you ask, The Thing can be read as a metaphor for US/Soviet tensions at the height of the Cold War, the AIDS epidemic, a game of chess, or for any other number of topics. Nobody ever called The Thing with all its allegorical stylings “elevated” or “hybrid” horror—not back then, and certainly not now. Why? Because they don’t need to. The Thing is just horror. Ultimately, I’d argue that calling horror anything other than just that betrays a core misunderstanding of the genre as a whole. Nobody would ever call Dracula or The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde “hybrid horror,” because that core synthesis has been built into the genre from the jump. It’s a feature—not a bug. That fact remains true whether we’re talking about The Thing, or The Fall of the House of Usher, or Pet Sematary, or The Sopranos. Horror can be anything, because horror has always been everything. Like I said, once you realize that, you really can’t unsee it. *** View the full article

Dear crime writer, Need to breathe a little life into the bloated corpse of your narrative? Looking for a new, downwind angle from which to approach its fetid stench? Then pull on a pair of surgical gloves and prep those nibs, because the epistolary format is the break in the case you’ve been hoping for. Epistolography lends itself to the crime genre quite nicely. I should know. I wrote my new novel as a series of missives. It’s called Letters to the Purple Satin Killer, and it explores the aftermath of a serial killer’s crimes via the correspondence he receives while on death row. It comes out August 6th through CLASH Books. Here are some of the lessons I learned while writing it. Complicity is Caring Say you are writing from the perspective of an irredeemable sociopath, as one does. No matter how abhorrent a character they are, you still want people to connect with them on a certain level, right? Letters are an ideal way to achieve this. Letters are personal, confidential, and intimate. Their confessional nature helps establish empathy, authority, an immediate rapport. Hell, they practically make the reader an accessory! And once you’ve won them over to the dark side, you’re free to abuse their trust to your heart’s content. Force feed them whatever disinformation you like. Because that’s another benefit to writing in the epistolary format. Letters are a great way to manipulate your vict—I mean, audience. What, you thought that irredeemable sociopath was going to be a reliable narrator? Here are some epistolary novels featuring a sociopathic main character that will take you on an emotional rollercoaster ride: The Collector by John Fowles, We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, and The End of Alice by A.M. Homes. All Readers are Voyeurs at Heart Reading someone’s personal correspondence is akin to eavesdropping on a conversation. Reading their diary is like wiretapping their innermost thoughts. How about perusing someone’s medical records? It doesn’t get any more intimate than that, right? What better way to draw the reader in, allow them to truly understand your characters, than by giving them complete and unfettered access? It satisfies the voyeuristic urge without the associated ethical concerns. Because if readers are anything, they are a group that gets off on the lives of other people. Hell, maybe your main character is an exhibitionist, letting it all hang out for the reader’s pleasure. Sure, you can have voyeurism without exhibition, but can you have exhibition without voyeurism? What would be the point? One book that really satisfies the voyeuristic urge is The Sluts by Dennis Cooper. This masterful novel is written as a compilation of fictional posts and emails between members of an online community obsessed with the death of a sex worker named Brad. Despite literally every single character being an unreliable sock puppet, the lurid subject matter proves an inescapable trap for the scopophilicly inclined. This Evidence Ain’t Gonna Disseminate Itself Although they may have started out that way, the contents of the modern epistolary novel aren’t restricted to solely letters. They can include any number of textual forms, such as magazine articles, newspaper clippings, audio transcriptions, legal documents, diary entries, grocery lists—which makes them the perfect vehicle for disguising your info dumps. So instead of having the villain explain the minutiae of their evil plan to the rolled eyes of all involved, or trotting out the chief inspector to give an overview of the evidence for the benefit of the reader, you can lay everything out in a more organic, more intellectually stimulating fashion. You can make the reader part of the investigation, instead of a gawker on the sideline. It makes sense for a police file to read like the outline of a college lecture. A monologue from your main character? Not so much. Lots of different epistolary novels have presented exposition in unique and exciting ways that go beyond the florid recitation of events via formal correspondence like in the classic mystery novel, The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace (wherein most of the documents in question are letters). There is the fabricated dossier of The Secret History of Twin Peaks by Mark Frost; or the decoder app of Night Film by Maria Pessl, which gives the reader access to all manner of supplemental material to the story. Stephen King’s Carrie interrupts the main narrative with news reports, book excerpts, and even defamatory graffiti scratched into desks. The otherwise non-epistolary In the Lake of the Woods includes “evidence” and “hypothesis” chapters to enhance the narrative experience. These are just a few of the reasons the epistolary format works so well in crime fiction. It is deceptive in its simplicity, yielding big emotional and thematic results. It adds a layer of realness to your writing, a non-fiction sheen, like in a mockumentary or found footage film. At the very least it gives you a change of scenery, a new sandbox to play in, which is sure to reinvigorate your work and give you a newfound sense of artistic purpose. Good luck and enjoy! *** View the full article

Cults, often concealed yet surprisingly pervasive, are inherently dysfunctional. Estimates suggest there are as many as 10,000 cults in the United States today. Cults are not a far-fetched concept—they are closer to home than most realize. While it would be easy to dismiss those immersed in these groups as gullible or weak-minded, that’s not the case. There’s a widespread misunderstanding of cult members and victims, but when you understand the circumstances that draw people to these groups, you begin to feel empathy and an eerie sense of identification. Because the people who join cults are no different from you or me, and cults may be difficult to recognize at first. In my new thriller Only the Guilty Survive, I explore the minds of a cult leader, loyalist, and defector through three characters that each offer a unique perspective on the complexities of cult life. Only the Guilty Survive is a dark story that raises unsettling questions about guilt, self-justification, and blame. Long before I began researching for my book, I was captivated by books about cults. The following five books span both fiction and nonfiction, shedding light on the spectrum of cult dynamics—from the seductive allure of communal living to the chilling influence of charismatic leaders. They explore the psychological mechanisms behind indoctrination, the haunting aftermath of cult experiences, and the enduring questions of guilt and blame that permeate such narratives. After all, when it comes to cults and communes, reality often proves stranger than fiction. The Girls – Emma Cline In The Girls, Evie Boyd, a bored 14-year-old in California, leaves home to join a cult reminiscent of Charles Manson’s “family.” Even if you’re largely unaware of the actions of Manson and his followers in the late sixties, you’d likely pick up on how closely the fictional storyline is modeled after the infamous group and its crimes. Emma Cline’s main character is a groundless teen plagued by adolescent problems, who is sucked into the orbit of Suzanne, an alluring member of a group of girls who worship an egomaniac leader named Russell and live at a ramshackle ranch. While Cline doesn’t recreate the actions of the Manson cult, the trajectory the story follows is reminiscent of reality, especially when the girls break into a home—the calling card of Manson’s followers. There’s even a famous rock musician offering Russell a record deal—a detail similar to the real-life connection between Manson and Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. The story is narrated by middle-aged Evie in the present time, allowing the reader to grasp both the emotions of a vulnerable teen as she recalls the events and the perspective of someone who’s spent her life analyzing her role in the events that took place. While the story is very much linked to Manson and his family, it’s Cline’s vivid writing style that sets The Girls apart. The Last Housewife – Ashley Winstead I discovered The Last Housewife long after I wrote Only the Guilty Survive, and I was surprised to find some similarities. (A character named Laurel! A podcaster!) This novel has a very different take on cults, though. It focuses on a secret society comprised of influential, rich men manipulating women. It’s reminiscent of NXIVM, a sex cult made up of the powerful elite that abused members physically and emotionally while committing crimes ranging from trafficking to wire fraud. The book’s main character, Shay, recounts her experience with a controlling older man named Don to a podcaster following the death of her friend Laurel. By integrating podcast transcripts, Ashley Winstead brings the reader into the past to show the forces that shaped Shay while she digs into the mysterious circumstances of her former roommate’s apparent suicide. The Last Housewife is a dark psychological thriller that explores misogyny, sexual violence, trust, and manipulation. Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor’s Story of Life and Death in the Peoples Temple – Deborah Layton Seductive Poison is a firsthand account of what happened in Jonestown, written by survivor Deborah Layton. Layton takes the reader on a journey from her early years to her indoctrination into Jim Jones’s People’s Temple and her eventual defection from the community in Guyana. Layton was one of Jones’s high-level members, a trusted member of his inner circle. Her honest, vivid memoir is a fascinating exploration into the shadowy world he built and the lies he told his followers, but importantly, it’s relatable. You can understand how she was seduced by Jones; Layton breaks down the barrier between “that could never happen to me” and “I can see how that could happen to anyone.” She details her escape from the jungle commune, leaving her mother, brother, and friends, shortly before the infamous Jonestown massacre in 1978. I drew from Layton’s accounts of her experiences when crafting the character of Lollie in Only the Guilty Survive. Like Layton, Lollie has become disillusioned with the leader she has followed for years and must plot how she can safely escape her home and leave her found family behind. The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple – Jeff Guinn While Seductive Poison is a memoir by a Jonestown survivor, The Road to Jonestown chronicles the life and death of Jim Jones, the charismatic leader of the People’s Temple. Author Jeff Guinn examines Jones’s early years, his involvement in politics and the church, and how he grew into a prominent leader before relocating his followers to a remote compound in the Guyanese jungle. Comprehensive and eye-opening, this biography takes you on a journey to understand the man behind the events that ultimately transpired in Jonestown. It’s as much a historical book as a psychological profile, and just as I think it’s important to understand why members of the People’s Temple chose to follow him, it’s equally important to understand the circumstances that shaped the leader from a young boy growing up in Indiana into one of the most notorious cult leaders in history. Trying to understand Jim Jones was a major part of my research for my novel’s leader, Dominic Bragg, a complicated, flawed, and magnetic character. Cultish – Amanda Montell Author Amanda Montell is a linguist, giving her a unique perspective to examine the role of language as a form of cult influence and power. She highlights a variety of cultish groups, from the obvious (Heaven’s Gate) to the unlikely (Instagram gurus and Peloton instructors). What’s fascinating is the thread tying all of these groups together: a command of language. While it could be easy to dismiss stereotypical cult followers as foolish, naïve, or susceptible, this book turns that notion on its head and has you examining all the ways you fall under the influence of people, groups, churches, or companies, simply through a powerful command of verbal elements designed to both create camaraderie and separate individuals. Jargon, acronyms, mantras: these are the elements of language that form a foundation on which cults are built. It’s interesting to understand the role and influence of language, and this was especially important to understand when I wrote scenes in which my novel’s fictional cult leader spoke to his followers. True to life, his words and demeanor went a long way to building trust and belonging among his followers. *** View the full article

With these crazy hot temperatures, crime increases. So, stay home, grab a frosé and lounge chair by the pool or a coffee drink and couch in the AC, and “increase” your crime the safe way with a delicious queer mystery or thriller. In this round-up, Queer Crime Writers* is scooping up several novels published earlier this summer, from A.I.-inspired storylines to cold cases to queer crime families to murders inspired by the Salem Witch trials. On the horizon, expect a new twisted gothic from John Fram and another Charleston, West Virginia-based crime procedural from Eliot Parker. Finally, don’t miss two complex and well-researched true crime books by authors Greg Lily and James Polchin. When the heat is on, crank up the air and kick back with a great crime novel. *Queer Crime Writers is an organization that advocates for LGBTQIA+ crime fiction authors and creates community for them. Deepfaked to Death, by Meg Perry The third book in Perry’s Angeles Investigations series features Kevin Brodie and Kristen Beach, brother and sister-in-law to Jamie Brodie, the main character of her popular twenty-three-book series. A former Los Angeles police officer turned private detective, Kevin investigates a case that takes the team into the world of A.I. and deepfakes, where it’s hard to tell what is or isn’t real. Jon Eckoff, a detective with the Los Angeles police force, is caught on camera shooting an unarmed man in an empty warehouse and is accused of the crime. But can what’s on video be believed? Jon claims it’s a fake, and he needs the Angeles Investigative team to help prove his innocence and find who is attempting to frame him and why. The Happy Month, Marshall Thornton Dom Reilly is a man with secrets. Secrets that could get him killed. But things are looking up in this third book of the Reilly series. The co-op he started with his boyfriend Ronnie has taken shape, his social life is thriving, and he enjoys his work at the Freedom Agenda, a nonprofit striving to exonerate the wrongly convicted. Dom is working on getting a client, Larry Wilkes, out of jail for the 1976 murder of his boyfriend and has taken on a fifty-year-old cold case, the 1949 murder of Vera Korenko. Fans of Marshall Thornton’s series will appreciate running into familiar characters as Dom Reilly juggles cases. But if his old friends can track him down, so can his old enemies. The Devil You Know, by Ali Vali In the ninth book in the award-winning series, The Devil You Know, Cain Casey has been groomed to take over the family’s organized crime business in New Orleans. Once a playgirl, she has settled into a stable life with her wife, Emma, and their three children. As her crime business grows, rogue federal agents present a new threat, and the Russian mob seeks revenge for losses they blame on Cain’s family. To protect themselves, Cain and Emma team up with the local feds, but the partnership is fraught. Cain wants to vanquish her enemies permanently, stopping at nothing to keep her business and family safe. Undercurrent, by Patricia Evans When bodies start washing up on the shore in Salem Harbor, Massachusetts, an elite task force of FBI agents, profilers, and detectives join forces to decode the clues and stop a killer inspired by the Salem Witch trials of 1692. Agent Tala Marshall overcame a childhood of deep generational wounds to become the country’s best criminal profiler. Now, facing her most challenging case yet, she partners with Wilder Mason, a local detective convinced the murders are connected to the famous witch trials. Hoping for more than a professional relationship, Wilder pursues the key to the case and Tala’s guarded heart. Will they uncover the connection between Salem’s past and present before another victim washes to shore? No Road Home, by John Fram In The Bright Lands, his queer horror thriller debut, Fram writes about a small Texas town absorbed with football, corrupt town officials, and a monster that demands blood sacrifices. In No Road Home, his second novel, he takes us back to Texas for an even more claustrophobic and gothic atmosphere. Toby Tucker, his new wife Alyssa, and his young queer son visit the family compound of his wife’s father, a famed fire and brimstone televangelist. Toby quickly learns that his wife, Alyssa, and her family have nefarious plans for Toby and his son. When a violent storm kills the power, his son reports seeing a spectral figure creeping around in the dark. When Alyssa’s father is found stabbed through the chest, Toby and his son must find a way to survive the night. Double-Crossed, by Eliot Parker In this continuation of Parker’s Ronan McCullough series, Charleston Police Sergeant McCullough, still recovering from his last case, investigates the charred remains of a federal agent and its connection to a professor’s encrypted money laundering scheme. As people associated with the scheme die, his boyfriend, Ty, helps secure a lead. When he discovers the staggering scope of the crimes, he knows he has stumbled into a conspiracy and can trust no one. Friends, colleagues, and mentors are all under suspicion as he hunts a killer and avoids becoming a victim himself. But how can he find a murderer when his only true suspect is a set of numbers? True Crime by Queer Authors Abingdon’s Boardinghouse Murder, by Greg Lilly This true-life account of a brutal 1945 murder in Abingdon, Virginia, combines fact and fictional narrative to explore the intricacies of the case and the mindset of the players who populate it. On a bitter November night in 1945, Helen Clark, a widow, shot her young boarder, a WWII veteran, and left him to die on the floor of his room. Clark then tossed the gun under the neighbor’s porch and took a taxi to join her teen daughters at a movie in nearby Bristol. When the body is found, the authorities claim it was a murder committed in a jealous rage, and the trial enthralls the nation. Blending newspaper reports, investigation documents, and other trial coverage, Lilly reveals the public and personal repercussions of this sensational murder. Shadow Men: the Tangled Story of Murder, Media, and Privilege that Scandalized Jazz Age America, by James Polchin (out now) Edgar Award finalist James Polchin’s much anticipated new true crime book opens in 1922 with the discovery of 19-year-old Clarence Peters’ body on the side of a road in New Rochelle, New York. The handsome, dishonorably discharged sailor was shot and discarded. Walter Ward, a scion of the “bread barons” who owned the largest chain of bread factories in the country, confessed to the murder, claiming self-defense against a gang of blackmailers who preyed on their victims’ moral weaknesses called “shadow men” to whom Peters supposedly belonged. Amidst the media firestorm, many speculated that Ward was lying about the true, more controversial motive for the murder: homosexual blackmail. A complex murder investigation with many twists and turns, this book highlights the social inequity, glamour, and violence of The Great Gatsby era. View the full article

Hello This is Claude. I will be attending the conference on September 19, 2024. I have completed seven all of the assignments. I attached the responses to this post. Respectfully CLAUDE NY WRITE TO PITCH ASSIGNMENT.docx

Happy to report that the number of thin skins is staying steady at 1 in 30.

Where and how do I submit to this contest?

I'm getting nauseous.

How many times must it be said? Until you run a workshop, you have little idea how bad some dialogue can be.

I've seen writers with great novels go down the tubes because of a poor title.

Nineteenth century writer Georges Polti proposed that there are only thirty-six dramatic situations for a story. He came to this conclusion by studying classic Greek plays as well as his contemporary literature. His plot descriptions are both useful and entertaining. “Crime Pursued by Vengeance” is a personal favorite, but you might prefer “Slaying of a Kinsman Unrecognized” or “Conflict with a God.” It’s worth noting that “Adultery” and “Murderous Adultery” are two different categories. This notion might relieve some pressure for authors. It asserts that a good story doesn’t need a shocking premise. Any idea can be original in the hands of new writers with their own unique perspectives. There’s also a distinct pleasure in encountering a familiar tale. I’ve read Jane Eyre more times than I can count, always surprised by some sentence or nuance that I missed before. And we all know children love to hear their favorite bedtime stories again and again. Retellings are about possibilities: What if Sherlock Holmes was a precocious teenage girl? What if Elizabeth Bennet used her keen wit to solve crimes? What if Richard III wasn’t really a hunchback? Retellings are all those what-ifs tumbling through space and time, finding infinite variations. I recognize my own bias—my latest mystery Hollow Bones is inspired by Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure. Still, when authors rewrite classic tales, they’re tapping into a primal delight. Even if the source material is somewhat obscure, there’s an acknowledgement that this story has persisted for a reason. The following eight books use established narratives, but approach them from unexpected angles, often violent ones. I wouldn’t necessarily say that the stakes are higher; the marriage market in Pride and Prejudice is serious business. But throw in a dead body or two, and there’s a new, appealing layer of suspense. The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey This unapologetically nerdy books finds Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant convalescing at a hospital, getting crankier by the minute from sheer boredom. Encouraged by his actress friend Marta, he undertakes a historical mystery, one that can be solved from the relevant comfort of his bed as long as he has some research help. Did Richard III really kill his nephews to secure his spot on the throne? Grant approaches this question as he would any other case, dismissing hearsay, relying on verifiable facts, and applying his skills of deduction. The result is a delight. Mrs. Rochester’s Ghost by Lindsay Marcott In this contemporary version of Jane Eyre, Marcott leans into the gothic potential of its rocky, California beach setting. There’s enough fog to make even a sensible young protagonist second-guess herself. The book’s premise is simple enough. After losing her job, Jane agrees to work for Evan Rochester, tutoring his daughter while living rent-free at their grand, spooky estate. The problem with that arrangement? Rochester’s been accused of killing his late wife. Jane wants to find out the truth, even if her investigation leads her into precarious, potentially even supernatural, circumstances. Prince of Cats by Ronald Wimberly The prelude to Prince of Cats references its source text Romeo and Juliet alongside Langston Hughes’s poem “Harlem,” letting readers know right away that they are encountering something unique. This graphic novel follows Tybalt in 1980s New York City, complete with drugs, gangs, and reckless teenage violence. It’s written in blank verse, demonstrating how a formal style can sound modern and cool. This innovative retelling is both an ode to Shakespeare and to hip-hop culture. Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James In some ways, this novel reads like an extended denouement—we see the Darcys from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice settled in their marriage. Unlike most denouements, though, this one introduces a new conflict, i.e. a murder. Could it be that George Wickham is more than a notorious cad—is he also a cold-blooded killer? In her final book, P. D. James offers up a twisty investigation that will delight both Austen fans and her own. The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray Okay, but what happens if the infamous Wickham is not the accused but the murdered? Then you get The Murder of Wickham by Claudia Gray. In this version of events, the Knightleys (from Austen’s Emma) host a summer party with some recognizable guests. Basically, it’s a locked room mystery with all your favorite Austen heroines. What elevates this novel to being more than lighthearted fan fiction, though, is the new characters that take center stage: Juliet Tilney and Jonathan Darcy. Juliet is free-spirited while Jonathan is reserved; when they team up, they make pretty good amateur sleuths. The Wrath and the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh In this version of One Thousand and One Nights, a teenage girl volunteers to marry the king of Khorasan, a man infamous for taking a new bride every night and killing her at dawn. What does Shahrzad want from her marriage to a serial killer? Revenge. She stays her own execution by entertaining the king with fantastical stories. But her bloodthirsty plan soon encounters a snag, namely her growing feelings for her husband. I have already established my preference for stories fitting of Polti’s “Crime Pursued by Vengeance” category, but there is a healthy YA tradition of “An Enemy Loved.” And this is still a fun spin on a classic. A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro There are so many takes on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective that Sherlock retellings deserve their own list. Nonetheless, I’ll offer just one, A Study in Charlotte, for its unexpectedly youthful approach to the cantankerous, brilliant investigator. This Holmes is a boarding school teenager with an off-putting temperament who still manages to attract the attention of newcomer Watson. Their friendship solidifies in the nick of time—they’re being framed for murder and need to find the real killer themselves. Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid First of all, I love that Val McDermid calls her adaptation of Austen’s novel by its original title. It’s a no-nonsense approach that suits the lauded crime writer’s style. And it seems as if she enjoyed writing this contemporary version of events against a backdrop of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The book was part of the short-lived Austen Project, which cajoled well-established writers into trying their hands at Austen adaptations. The project was abandoned, though, before Mansfield Park and Persuasion got their due. Writing this description made me want to reread the novel, but I’m even more excited about McDermid’s upcoming Queen MacBeth (already out in the UK). *** Featured image: William Hamilton (1751–1801), Isabella Appealing to Angelo (1793), Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC. Wikimedia Commons. View the full article

At fifty-one years old, Mary Haynes, known as “Big Mary” to the other women and clients for her large stature, was one of the older sex workers on the avenue—and one of its more experienced. She dished out advice to younger girls from her two decades on the avenue, including how to spot an undercover police sting (“Assume any new prostitute on the avenue is an undercover officer”) and how to defuse a violent situation with a client. In her twenty years selling sex on San Bernardo, she had never once been stabbed or shot at. She’d only been arrested four times in two decades. But she knew plenty of girls who had fared far worse. One woman was stabbed in the head by a client; another was stabbed eleven times but lived. Even she was not completely immune: Big Mary was raped once by a potential john. She later led police to the man, a repeat customer, and he was arrested and sent to prison for thirty years. When she first met Melissa Ramirez, Big Mary thought she was the type of person who could get herself into real trouble on the streets. She was also struck by how youthful she looked. She took an immediate liking to her, and the two became close, partying together and sharing clients. In the early evening of September 2, 2018, Big Mary called Melissa via Facebook Messenger. She was having a profitable day and offered to rent them a hotel room for the night. She still had a few more “interviews”—what Big Mary called meetings with clients—but they would reconnect later. “Hey, I’m going to get us a room,” she told Melissa. “Let’s meet up later.” “Okay, I’ll be ready,” Melissa told her. The two hung up. A few hours later, Big Mary called Melissa again. Once, twice, three times. No answer. The green dot on Melissa’s Facebook Messenger pro- file indicated she was still logged in. But, still, no answer. * Emily Varela was starting to regret taking in Melissa. In the two weeks since she allowed her good friend to stay with her at the Pan-American Courts on San Bernardo, Melissa hadn’t contributed a dime to rent. She rarely left the small room, taking naps on the only mattress, and seldom showered, cleaning up only when her boyfriend was coming to pick her up. He was an older guy with a pickup truck. For reasons she didn’t fully understand, he creeped Emily out. And as Emily was trying to stay clean, Melissa would routinely arrive home high on crack or amphetamines. She hadn’t expected Melissa to suddenly turn her life around, but she was hoping she would do . . . something. Around 2:00 a.m. on Monday, September 3, Emily returned home from a long night of turning tricks, tired and feet throbbing, but with a fistful of crumpled tens and twenties in her bra. She unlocked the door to her room. Melissa, fully dressed, slept on the mattress in the middle of the small room, snoring softly. The familiar burnt-plastic smell of freebased crack rocks wafted through the air. Emily grew enraged. She loved Melissa. But she couldn’t afford to get kicked out of the Pan-American and she definitely did not want to go back to jail. Melissa had broken the one rule she had imposed: no drugs in the room. She had tried to be patient with her friend. But enough was enough. She shook Melissa awake. “I don’t want you here,” Emily told her friend. “Go make some money. Go do something. Just leave.” Melissa staggered to the bathroom. She patted down her hair with water from the sink and applied some eyeliner. Then she pulled on sandals, grabbed a small pocketknife she always carried with her, and, without muttering a word, shuffled out into the humid Laredo night. ** San Bernardo Avenue was quiet and wet in the early-morning hours of September 3. Under a light rain, Melissa wandered along the strip, likely trying to puzzle out where to sleep that night or how to score her next crack hit. The sky was black and starless, dawn still five hours away. Sometime after 2:00 a.m., a white 2015 Dodge Ram 2500 pickup truck pulled over on San Bernardo Avenue. The driver swung open the passenger-side door and Melissa hopped inside. The truck drove off into the night. Ten hours later, at around noon, a passerby inspecting ranches for sale in a rural stretch of northwest Webb County, twelve miles north of Laredo, spotted something clumped in the grass alongside the gravel road. As he pulled to a stop, he saw the contours of a body. A woman in black shorts and an olive-green tank top, shoeless with black socks on, lay facedown in the brush just off the intersection of Jefferies Road and State Highway 255. Her stockinged toes still touched the gravel path, as if she had fallen face-first into the thornbush. She wasn’t moving. The motorist called police and alerted nearby neighbors, who called John Chamberlain, the owner of the ranch where the body lay. Just then, Rene Arce, an off-duty seven-year veteran of the Laredo Police Department, drove his thirteen-year-old stepdaughter and three-year-old son in his black Dodge Ram on Jefferies Road. The three were enjoying a lazy Labor Day drive, while his wife, Tanya Arce, ran errands in town. Arce was scouting for land on which to build a home for his growing family and enjoying some rare downtime with his kids. The drive took him north on Jefferies Road and past State Highway 255. When he saw Chamberlain’s truck blocking the road up ahead, he turned the truck around and decided to loop back on Jefferies Road, stopping briefly to let his stepdaughter and son enjoy a few horses neighing and grazing at the fence line of the Chamberlain Ranch. When his wife called them back for lunch, he drove off. It was an innocuous Laredo outing. But to the neighbors and Chamberlain—the image of a stiffening body still fresh in their mind—it was suspicious. They hopped in their car and circled around Jefferies Road, drove up behind the black truck on State Highway 255, and snapped pictures of the license plate with their cell phones. A short time later, a Webb County sheriff’s deputy arrived at the scene. The body was stretched out prone in a tangle of blue-green thornbush. Her left arm was folded under her, her left hand clutching a yellow bag of peanut M&M’s. Her right arm was bent next to her. Blood congealed in a small, round hole on the right side of her jaw, and two small, circular dark red wounds punctured her neck, just under her right ear. Dark blood thickened in a leech-sized hole in her right wrist, just below the base of her palm. A large puddle of crimson blood bloomed near her head and seeped into the dirt around her. Her face was streaked with dried blood. Near the body, there was a small plastic baggie containing several crack cocaine rocks. Her eyes were half open. She had been shot three times at close range. Her face swelled from the trauma it had recently received. Shell casings were found nearby in the thornbush. As Webb County sheriff’s deputies arrived, Chamberlain told them about the suspicious truck that had U-turned and sped off. He showed them the license plate number. This wasn’t a hit-and-run or a border crosser dying of exposure. This had much darker undertones. The deputies radioed in the body and plate number. *** Captain Federico Calderon, head of the Webb County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigation Division, was home enjoying Labor Day off when he received a call from a deputy about a body on Jefferies Road. As supervisor of investigators, Calderon often fielded calls from detectives asking for advice or help planning out next steps. But as the deputy described the victim and the scene, Calderon realized this one was different. Tall and heavyset, with small, smiling eyes set in a round, boyish face, the soft-spoken Calderon was unique within the sheriff’s office in that he was popular among both the rank-and-file and top brass. His father was a business owner from Nuevo Laredo, and his mom, a government worker from Laredo; Calderon embodied the Nuevo Laredo–Laredo symbiosis, easily fluent in both English and Spanish. He had studied technology at Texas A&M International University and thought he would pursue a career in that field. But after college, he landed a job with the district attorney’s office, and the county prosecutor offered to send him to the police academy. He graduated and started working for the Webb County Sheriff’s Office, rising from sergeant to lieutenant to captain. He supervised the cybercrime division and became president of the Webb County Deputy Sheriffs Association, the local union. Smart and persuasive, wielding respect he had garnered over the years from Sheriff Martin Cuellar, Calderon negotiated contracts for higher salaries and better working conditions for his coworkers. “You have to have a special kind of character to bring both those sides together,” coworker Lieutenant Joe Peña said. “He did it very well.” Assigned to lead the Criminal Investigation Division in 2015, Calderon oversaw everything from home robberies and sexual assaults to gang-related violence and safe houses used by smugglers. Deaths of- ten included migrants hit by passing trucks or dying in Laredo’s triple- digit heat and suicides. Murders were less common. As the deputy described the scene on Jefferies Road—the victim’s wounds, the shell casings, the suspicious truck—Calderon realized he should see this one for himself. He grabbed his gear and drove out to the scene. When he arrived, Sheriff Cuellar and other deputy sheriffs were already there. Calderon examined the body and jotted down notes from the investigators. Cuellar pulled him aside: something about this one felt strange. He wanted him personally leading the case. Calderon agreed. A few minutes later, Texas Ranger Ernesto “E. J.” Salinas arrived 44 — C H A PTER 3 at the scene. Medium height and clean-shaven, Salinas, 49, was barrel- chested and had a military crew cut that ran high to a small patch of silvery dark hair, which was perpetually covered by a white Stetson hat. He was in his usual uniform of starched white shirt and beige tie, pressed beige slacks and ostrich skin cowboy boots. His eyes creased down at the outer edges, and his face was framed by a hard chin and perma-wrinkled brow, weighed down by years of investigating bullet- ripped bodies and miscreants along the border. He spoke in measured, low tones weighted with authority with a hint of a Spanish accent, like a Latino drill sergeant. As a Texas Ranger, he was elite among the borderlands’ criminal investigators. Though there are more than 80,000 law enforcement officers across Texas, only about 160 of them call themselves Texas Rangers. Each year more than a thousand applicants try to land one of the handful of coveted slots, if or when one becomes available, and become rangers, who have been defending lives and property in Texas since 1823. Today, the Texas Ranger unit is a division of the Texas Department of Public Safety, alongside state troopers and driver’s license officials, and focuses almost entirely on major criminal investigations and border intelligence. Rangers need to have eight years of experience with a law enforcement agency and be employed by DPS before even applying. If chosen, after a thorough criminal and personal background check, the ranger is as- signed to one of six “companies” across the state. Salinas was a criminal investigator in Company D, a twenty-six-county region stretching 425 miles along the U.S.-Mexico border from Texas’s southernmost city, Brownsville, northwest to Val Verde County. When taking over a case, the ranger brought not just expertise and specialized training but the substantial resources of the State of Texas, including the nearly $2 bil- lion annual budget of the Texas Department of Public Safety. Salinas grew up on a ranch near Oilton, Texas, a town of 170 souls thirty miles east of Laredo. His father, Ernesto Juvenito Salinas, was the county’s elected justice of the peace and Salinas grew accustomed to residents rapping on their ranch house door any hour of the day and night to ask for help with a disabled truck or report a dead body. That rural sense of public service and law enforcement permeated young Salinas. At age six, he’d survey the cars parked outside his father’s grocery store/gas station and jot down their license plate numbers. If someone robbed his daddy’s store, he told customers, he’d know where to find them. After high school, Salinas worked for a few years as a roughneck on oil rigs in South Texas before going to college and getting a job with the Webb County Sheriff’s Office. It took him four tries to finally, in 1997, land a position as a state trooper with DPS, then another fourteen years before being promoted to ranger in 2011. He worked first in the Laredo Joint Operations Intelligence Center in charge of border security issues, then transferred to the Texas Ranger field office as a criminal investigator. Better trained, with deeper pockets and access to myriad state databases, rangers are routinely called out to help on murder investigations, especially along the border, bringing more resources and expertise to smaller jurisdictions and sheriff’s departments. Calderon had worked with Salinas on past cases, including sexual assaults and a number of child abuse cases. The two greeted each other, and Calderon filled him in on what they’d found so far. Nearby, county CID investigators photographed the body and the scene and bagged evidence. Three shell casings, all from a .40-caliber handgun, were collected and deposited into clear plastic evidence bags. Calderon recognized the .40-caliber shell casings. They were for jacketed hollow points—the bullet of choice among law enforcement departments—which mushroomed on impact, causing a larger diameter of damage. Police departments favored them because they didn’t pass through bodies and injure anyone beyond the intended target. And they caused maximum damage as they expanded and tore through bones and organs. Detectives also collected the small plastic baggie filled with crack rocks and the M&M’s bag, dropped them into evidence bags, and labeled them. Salinas squatted next to the victim and studied the wounds. The one on the woman’s right wrist, he noted, was a defensive scar from trying to shield her face from the bullets. In her final moments, she had tried to deflect her death. Something else caught his eye: the victim had on black socks and no shoes. Salinas knew that area well and had grown up on similar ranches. Anyone living out there wore cowboy boots. The victim was not from around there—nor, he assumed, was the gunman. He also noticed the victim had scrawled a phone number in pen on her left thigh, and took note of the number. Salinas took his own photos of the scene. He spray-painted circles around evidence in the field, alerting technicians to their location. Then he and Calderon left to investigate their first lead: the mysterious black truck. **** Arce had returned home with his children when he received a call from a buddy at Laredo PD: his truck was being sought in connection to the body found on Jefferies Road. Alarm and confusion billowed in his mind. He remembered driving up to the police cars earlier that day. He picked up his phone and called the watch commander on duty at the Laredo Police Department, explained what had happened, and asked what he should do. The commander told him he would get back to him and that he should “stand by.” A few minutes later, Arce’s stepdaughter received a call from a neighborhood friend: their street was lined with armed police officers, who were circling the Arce home. Tanya Arce, her three-year-old son on her hip, opened the garage door to flag down a police officer and clear up the misunderstanding. Outside, Webb County sheriff’s deputies and Laredo police officers, dressed in body armor and Kevlar helmets, assault rifles at the ready, closed in on the couple. They ordered them to kneel and cuffed Rene and Tanya Arce on their front lawn. The pair was driven to a sheriff’s substation on Highway 59 for questioning. They were told they were being questioned for a case being investigated by the FBI and Texas Rangers. There was no search warrant. They were never read their Miranda rights. Rene Arce, a law enforcement officer with a clean record, agreed to cooperate. Calderon and Salinas questioned Rene and Tanya. Rene explained how he had driven his stepdaughter and son down Jefferies Road earlier that day, how he had turned around when he saw the road blocked. He allowed them to check his phone. The investigators wanted to know if he was having an affair with any women and why he had not called in the discovery of the body. No, he was not having any affairs, he told them. And he never saw the body; he hadn’t gotten close enough. After nearly five hours of questioning, the couple was released and deputies drove them back to their home. Rene Arce’s personal guns were confiscated, and he was placed on administrative leave until further notice. Arce wasn’t completely ruled out, but by the end of the day, investigators realized they had the wrong person. Arce was not a suspect. News of the raid on his home nonetheless leaked out into the city via La Gordiloca, a rogue local muckraker. La Gordiloca—or “crazy, fat woman” in Spanish, whose real name is Priscilla Villarreal—had heard of the raid through a Laredo police source and shared it with her more than eighty thousand Facebook followers. La Gordiloca had created a loyal online following by cruising Laredo streets in her 1998 Dodge pickup and reporting on car crashes, drug raids, homicides, and other nocturnal crimes via Facebook live streams laced with Spanish profanity and street lingo. “¿Qué rollo?” she often asked at the start of a nighttime shift, prompting streams of heart emojis from audience members watch- ing live. Villarreal, a tenth grade dropout with a shaved head and spackled with tattoos, rolled up to crime scenes or reported on tips fed to her from sources within Laredo PD, often beating out local media to stories. In one of those scoops, she reported on a former Laredo police investigator who resigned after he was caught skimming gambling proceeds from raids on slot machine casinos. Her posts appeared days before any other media had the story. But her quick-to-report style and loose sourcing tactics drew trouble. In 2017, she posted allegations of abuse at a local childcare center (“Teenagers having babies!”) that proved unfounded. The center sued for defamation and won a $300,000 judgment after she failed to appear in court; Villarreal appealed that ruling. Later that year, Laredo police arrested her and charged her with misuse of information after she reported on the suicide of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection supervisor, whose name she published. That case was dismissed, and Villarreal sued the police department in a case that reached the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.* The raid on the Arce home was prime Gordiloca fodder: salacious, dramatic, and involving a law enforcement official. Villarreal went live, informing followers, “It is being said but NOT CONFIRMED that a Laredo Police department officer has been or will be detained at any moment. Authorities are at a home located inside La Cuesta Subdivision this is in the North Side of Laredo.” The next day, she posted an update with more details on the raid: “Authorities surrounded a home yesterday that is said to be of a Laredo Police Officer by the last name ARCE In north Laredo at La Cuesta Subdivision. It is being said the officer was taken in for questioning a [sic] released hours later.” Pictures of the Arces’ home and their vehicles also circulated on social media. Calderon reminded himself of the bad information that could often circulate in Laredo involving crimes. Running down leads like Arce, which proved baseless, was a necessary though less than pleasant part of the job. Later that day, a Webb County sheriff’s deputy who had worked at the county jail recognized the face of the victim from a photo taken at the crime scene. The medical examiner also ran the victim’s fingerprints through a Webb County police database and confirmed that the young woman found slain on the side of Jefferies Road was Melissa Ramirez. ___________________________________ Excerpted from The Devil Behind the Badge, by Rick Jervis. Published by Day Street Books. Copyright 2024. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission. * In a narrow decision in January 2024, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Villarreal, saying the city and county officials she was suing have “qualified immunity.” In a Facebook post shortly after the ruling, Villarreal vowed to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. View the full article